Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The true stories of the Underground Railroad captured in real time by a legendary abolitionist and Underground Railroad Conductor--a riveting collection of the hardships, hairbreadth escapes and mortal struggles of enslaved people fighting their way to freedom. William Still's meticulously recorded collection of narratives of escape--unlike traditional autobiographical slave narratives--chronicles a wide variety of stories, laying the tracks of the Underground Railroad through correspondences, legal documents, transcribed speech, reward advertisements, and biographical sketches. Together they form an unprecedented and essential archive chronicling the efforts for freedom of escaped slaves.
The Underground Rail Road Records offers some of the best evidence we have of this extraordinarily covert resistance network, and narrates a series of chapters that, at their creative determination seem almost magical. The stories bear witness to the intense desire for freedom--and the powerful agency of the enslaved to acquire it. Their stories are moving and remarkable--like that of William Peel, who wrapped himself in straw to be shipped in a box that carried him north. Or Clarissa Davis, who hid in a coop for more than two months and was smuggled aboard a ship, dressed in male attire.
Originally published in 1872, but never timelier, The Underground Railroad records affirm the powerful draw of freedom and the imaginative means people went to achieve it, and brings to life the human drama of women, men, and children taking the most dramatic risks imaginable to escape the horrors of bondage.
Synopsis
A riveting collection of the hardships, hairbreadth escapes and mortal struggles of enslaved people seeking freedom: these are the true stories of the Underground Railroad. As a conductor for the Underground Railroad, the covert resistance network created to aid and protect slaves seeking freedom; William Still helped as many as 800 people escape enslavement. He also meticulously collected the letters, biographical sketches, arrival memos and ransomed notes of the escapees. The Underground Railroad Records is an archive containing the primary documents and narrative arc of the greatest, most successful campaign of civil disobedience in American History.
This edition, with a powerful introduction by Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose debut novel evokes these records, highlights the remarkable creativity, resilience and determination demonstrated by those trying to subvert bondage. It is a timeless testament to the power we all have to challenge systems that oppress us.